Winter Series Preview - まおゆう 魔王勇者
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Image by Koma Kiri Aoko
It's been a long time since I've last posted on this. I'll try posting a few reviews over the next few weeks of series I'm watching right now and maybe games I've been playing.
I'll be rating the series I review over the course of the next few weeks on a scale of 10 under the following catergories:
I'll be rating the series I review over the course of the next few weeks on a scale of 10 under the following catergories:
- Story
- Art / Animation
- Characters
- Overall Entertainment
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Story: 7~8/10
Maoyu is often compared to Spice and Wolf due to it's staff and general content, though the compairson is rather unfair. Maoyu's story is considerably more vast than Spice and Wolf's, which (I've gathered from the two anime series) focused a lot on the economics of the world, as well as the growth of the two characters. Maoyu on the otherhand, is a story encompassing an entire world - almost two. It's essentially what might happen if you were to travel back into the 1300s (or around there) and spread the ideals of the Enlightenment 400 years earlier.
The story is well written, which is why it might surprise many that the novel series has it's origins from 2ch. The anime skipped over some smaller plot details, and in turn also created a bit of a loose plot threads, which may or may not impact a future event, coming in a few episodes or so. An example from a more recent episode is the Dragon Princess. The staff skipped over the Dragon King battle in which the whole situation with the Dragon Princess comes up, making her first full appearance rather abrupt.
Art / Animation: 7/10
Animation wise, this series is fine. I've got no problems as to how it's animated. There really isn't much to blow a budget on, considering that in the last 5 episodes, we've been given 1 brief 'battle', which wasn't shown (flash of light), and a large navel failure (release the krakens) that wasn't exactly action heavy. I'm hoping that they'll pull out all the stops for the upcoming Aurora Island campaign because that campaign is mighty impressive.
Other than characters, the rest of the picture (backgrounds and most inanimate objects) have a washed down water colour look to them. It's a little bit jarring to see it contrasted with the sharpness of the characters.
Characters: 8/10
I've included character design in this one too because I'm not too fond of them. I'll acknowledge that I'm quite biased in this, as I'm coming from Ishida Akira's "Kotowaru" manga adaptation, and those designs were quite amazing. If these designs do one thing well, it's making the characters much more generic than Ishida's designs do. The generic names really benefit from the even more generic designs. Overall generic-ness of over 9000. The Demon Queen doesn't really look like a demon queen at all though. Looks like she could've been plucked straight out of the frontier village. The Dragon Princess really took a fall in design, though the embers on her breath wagging tail are a nice touch.
Anywho, personal biases out of the way, this one gets an 8 because the characters, while based in generic tropes, all have their own personalities and don't feel cookie cutter. I wish they had a little bit of focus on the Noble students though, as I feel that the growth in those three characters really personifies the growth of the Winter Kingdom.
Overall Entertainment: (7.5~) 8/10
Giving this one an overal 8. It's certainly something I look forward to every week and usually alway a fun and interesting watch. A few problems with skipping material, but overall it's a solid series. Anime-Only viewers won't have the same problems with it as I did but you'll probably notice some of the dropped plot details if you pay enough attention.
Art / Animation: 7/10
Animation wise, this series is fine. I've got no problems as to how it's animated. There really isn't much to blow a budget on, considering that in the last 5 episodes, we've been given 1 brief 'battle', which wasn't shown (flash of light), and a large navel failure (release the krakens) that wasn't exactly action heavy. I'm hoping that they'll pull out all the stops for the upcoming Aurora Island campaign because that campaign is mighty impressive.
Other than characters, the rest of the picture (backgrounds and most inanimate objects) have a washed down water colour look to them. It's a little bit jarring to see it contrasted with the sharpness of the characters.
Characters: 8/10
I've included character design in this one too because I'm not too fond of them. I'll acknowledge that I'm quite biased in this, as I'm coming from Ishida Akira's "Kotowaru" manga adaptation, and those designs were quite amazing. If these designs do one thing well, it's making the characters much more generic than Ishida's designs do. The generic names really benefit from the even more generic designs. Overall generic-ness of over 9000. The Demon Queen doesn't really look like a demon queen at all though. Looks like she could've been plucked straight out of the frontier village. The Dragon Princess really took a fall in design, though the embers on her breath wagging tail are a nice touch.
Anywho, personal biases out of the way, this one gets an 8 because the characters, while based in generic tropes, all have their own personalities and don't feel cookie cutter. I wish they had a little bit of focus on the Noble students though, as I feel that the growth in those three characters really personifies the growth of the Winter Kingdom.
Overall Entertainment: (7.5~) 8/10
Giving this one an overal 8. It's certainly something I look forward to every week and usually alway a fun and interesting watch. A few problems with skipping material, but overall it's a solid series. Anime-Only viewers won't have the same problems with it as I did but you'll probably notice some of the dropped plot details if you pay enough attention.
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